The State of Union

Each year, the President delivers his State of the Union address— a report on the condition of the nation and a synopsis of his agenda. As I watched this year, I began to ponder our own inner state of union.

Though the talk of body, mind and spirit saturates spiritual dialogue, we often overlook this union and hold aspects of ourselves as separate. We leave them to attempt communion with the intermediary of our mind ruling supreme. It is a disconnect we have learned to live with— a body denied, a mind unfulfilled, and a spirit left wandering in search of home. Our nation is disenfranchised.

Perhaps we all need to make our own State of the Union address— an annual, if not daily, evaluation of our inner nation and our plan to nurture its union.

In my personal journey and in my work as a guide for others, I have noticed a false union between Humanity’s body, mind and spirit. It is false as it is at the command of an image of perfection proposed and imposed by the mind— an image of perfection that in fact drives us further from perfection.

Through our domestication, we develop an image of perfection for our body, mind and even our spirit. Each is constructed in layers of beliefs denoting ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Though we may rebel against one layer, we skip an important step which is to slough off the layer and uncover the authenticity beneath. Instead, we righteously build layer upon layer until our nature is encrusted by beliefs. There may be union, but it is one that is based in a disconnect from the true nature of our body, mind and spirit.

The nature of all things is love. Love is the force of creation and the common thread weaved through the tapestry of life. It is what our body expresses as happiness, what our mind expresses as creativity, and what our spirit expresses as God.

When we serve love, we are at one with our nature. This is the union we seek—it is what inspires us to merge with a lover or to commune with God—but the true communion is between you and the love that you are. Without this union, all others will be but a temporary illusion.

The path back to such communion is surrender. We must be willing give ourselves over to the unknown. For love is not something we ‘know’; it is simply what we are. When we ‘know’ love, we distort it into a concept which becomes a projection onto the authentic experience of love. So we must let go of trying to love at all and find out what resides in the space between our concepts. The same holds true for our body, mind and spirit— we do not have to tell them how to be what they are; let them show us.

A teacher once asked me, “What would you be without your story?”, and it changed my world. My mind surrendered in service to my body and spirit; and my body became more permeable to the presence of spirit. All came together in a shared space of creation— a true state of union. And so I ask you, “What would you be without your story?”